Books vs. documents: what's wrong with so-called "ebooks"

Sorry Bezos, but I know a book when I see one, and Kindle ain't it. Neither are its E-Ink-based cousins, and that's a shame, because with a few tweaks they could actually replace dead tree.<BR><BR>Read More

 

[batrastard]

One entire genre that nobody's been discussing: periodicals, particular long-form weeklies and monthlies.<BR><BR>I currently get 3-4 of these, but I very rarely get to read even 10% of the content in them. I'm not willing to carry them around with me all of the time, so I never have them when I have a few minutes to kill. They also add a ton of clutter, and I feel bad throwing them away without having read them.<BR><BR>I'm looking forward to transferring these dead-tree subscriptions over to wireless delivery and always having half a dozen issues or so available. DRM isn't an issue for me for this type of content, and if there was a specific article I wanted to save, I'd go to the publication's web site and save/print from there (or I'd buy a copy at the newsstand). Of course, there are some publications that this isn't currently suited for (National Geographic style magazines with a ton of photography and illustrations), but over time this will improve, and I'd keep the print subscriptions to the coffee-table magazines anyway.<BR><BR>Frankly, I prefer reading the text-only versions with no advertising, and I'm willing to pay for that by itself.

 

[batrastard]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Hannibal:<BR><BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content"> For one, Stokes misses the difference between medium and message. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>Actually, I think it's you who've missed something important, namely, the last 30+ years of media studies.<BR><BR>And speaking of missing things, I think a lot of people in this thread missed my point. The Kindle deliberately styles itself as something of a "Book 2.0," and my point is that it isn't, because it doesn't have proper legacy support for existing formats and features. It's just Kindle 1.0, whatever that is. <BR><BR>And it's fine for it to be a totally new thing--a portable document reader with a reflective screen. But this article wasn't as much about what Kindle is as about what it isn't. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>I'd have to disagree here - most of what I hear out of Amazon is summed up in the Michael Lewis quote they stick at the top of their product page: "This is the future of book reading. It will be everywhere." It happens to be that a lot of people have read the claim as "This is the future of books", which allows lazy argumentation precisely because it allows you to focus on the easy question "Kindle isn't a book" by listing features that it doesn't have rather than "how do people want to read book-length text", which requires thinking about how and why people read.<BR><BR>In particular, I expect better out of Ars because it is obvious to me that at some point years ago, someone smart asked "What is the future of technology journalism" instead of saying "This is how Ars Technica isn't as good as a print magazine".<BR><BR>By the way, I very much like the experience of reading the Ars "blog" on the Kindle, and I hope you guys are making good money from the subscriptions.

 

[batrastard]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Hannibal:<BR>Why did he say "this is the future of <I>book</I> reading," or "this is the future of reading book-length texts," if the point isn't that Kindle is somehow a /book/ replacement? Why not just claim that it's "the future of reading," and leave books out of it?<BR><BR>Anyway, I've thought quite a bit about how and why people read, and so have typographers and book designers and historians of the book for the past few hundred years. You should read some of their work. I can give you a bibliography. But I'll tell you who I firmly believe has not thought nearly hard enough about how and why people read: Jeff Bezos, and the folks at Amazon. And it shows in their work. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>It's a lot easier to say "book reading" than "long-form immersive text reading". Yes, "book" is an overloaded term with a lot of different meanings, but I don't think there's any better term that describes the concept. I do think Amazon could explain the concept better, but their target audience (as I see it) seems to understand. Nobody that I've shown it to says "but it's not as good as a book - where is the picture of the author on the back cover?" And nobody says "oh, it reads magazines and newspapers too? Those aren't books!"<BR><BR>And it's important to distinguish between long-form reading and short-form reading because the user experience is so different. When looking through an RSS feed or looking through message board threads, navigation and response time are very important (I much prefer my desktop machine for that purpose), but when reading books and long articles, display quality, simple navigation, and "holdability" are key.<BR><BR>I actually am very interested in the history of print and books, so I'd love a bibliography. But book designers are just like any other human profession - they are very good at rationalizing the things that they do, and rarely have a chance to start from scratch in their thinking. This doesn't mean that there aren't valuable lessons learned, it's just that concert hall architects aren't necessarily the best people to go to when designing a MP3 player.

 

[batrastard]

That's really up to the publishers isn't it? In fact, Amazon has a clause in their publisher contract stating that they can sell subsidized books for less than the eBook "list" price. That's why "A Thousand Splendid Suns" sells at the Kindle store for $9.99.<BR><BR>Or you could load up all the free MobiPocket books you want and enjoy the free wireless internet access.<BR><BR>BTW I fully expect that within 5 years, these will be sold for $199 including a $99 online book-buying credit. Maybe given away as part of Amazon Prime or some other promotion.

 

[batrastard]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Julio Inglesias:<BR>This is what I'd love to see:<BR><BR>A simple reader for the hundreds of .PDF and HTML manuals and technical documents that I currently have.<BR> </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>It exists, except for the $100-$200 part:<BR><BR>https://www.irexshop.com/product_info.php?cPath=22&prod...c9246a4bf8b977926719<BR><BR>Considering that the display itself is rumored to cost about $300, you probably won't see a $150 version for a while. You're more likely to find a cheap tablet PC.

 

[batrastard]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Julio Inglesias:<BR><BR>Witness the BBC Domesday project:<BR><BR>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Domesday_Project<BR><BR>Mind you, they did eventually figure out how to read it.<BR><BR>Alexandria was lost due to violence or natural disaster, today it's planned obsolescence.<BR>A book can last for a thousand years if it's taken care of. That DVD you have might not be accessible in two years because someone wants you to buy a new format of storage, Blue-Ray, HD-DVD etc. etc.<BR><BR>My tinfoil hat tells me that maybe there's more to this whole ebook thing than convenience for the consumer... </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>Why, do you think the publishing industry wants to eliminate printed books? What's your reasoning?

 

[batrastard]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by hpsgrad:<BR>I also notice significant interest in the format for e-books. Lots of people advocate their favorite format, on the basis of this or that feature (lack of DRM counts as a feature for my purposes). I agree with those who argue that some common format will need to be developed before these devices become mainstream. I submit as well that the devices will need to be standardized in such a way that pdf documents can be pre-formatted for them; this will make such devices far more appealing to those of us who read online journals (which are commonly offered in pdf). As people have pointed out, reformatting a pdf to fit the screens of current readers doesn't work very well, and takes a long time. If one page format were adoped commonly, pre-prepared pdfs will probably follow shortly afterwards. The advantage of this pre-formatting is twofold: first, it saves the reader the hassle and time of doing the conversion themselves. Second, the person creating the pdf will more likely have the ability to modify the formatting of the document so that it flows naturally on the screen. This would, IMO, be a significant advance in electronic reading devices and documents for them. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>In my personal observation, this misses one of the main attractions of ebooks - the ability to resize the text based on personal need and reading conditions. Every person over 40 that I showed the Kindle to immediately fell in love with this feature, and even I (with good corrected eyesight) find it convenient to set the text size larger when reading late at night.<BR><BR><BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content"><BR>Let me make another comment about formats here. The nice thing about pdf is that you can gain the benefits of a typographer's skill. It preserves good layout and typeface choice (equally, it preserves poor choices). A device that that allows layout snobs like Hannibal and I to enjoy the pleasures of well thought-out layout and typeface, while at the same time allowing the 'medium separated from the message' folks to get their plaintext fix, would be a huge advance. It would be a very good thing for the device manufacturer because it would appeal to a wider audience, and such modifications are likely to be done in software rather than hardware, making them cheaper on a per-unit basis. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>This reminds me of the early days of HTML and the web: arguments between semantic HTML purists ("use EM instead of B because EM says what it means rather than what it should look like") and HTML graphic designers ("I don't care if my page layout isn't really a table - that's the only way I can get it to look the way that I want"). The graphic-design approach has mostly won for the full-client web, but maybe the semantic layout approach is more appropriate for ebook readers.<BR><BR>I do hope that quality of layout and typography become selling points for ebook readers. I wonder if there would be a market for a reader that would use LaTeX internally for it's rendering? Hmmmm.<BR><BR>By the way, for $4,000 you can pre-order an 8 or 9.7 inch eInk prototype kit. I have no idea when it's supposed to ship.